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This article posted yesterday on the Wall Street Journal talks about the increase of people apologising for their wrongs (sometimes decades after the event) via social networking sites.
The accessibility that we have to others, even people we never talk to in real life, people we haven't seen since we were eating crayons together as young children, means it's easy for us to track down those we feel we have wronged and try to make amends.
This got me to thinking about a couple of things. Firstly, do social networking sites provide us with a certain amount of bravado, so we can say the things we never had the balls to in person? (I'm voting yes)
Secondly, following on from a conversation I had with my husband last week, I've been thinking a lot about things that happened a long time ago I feel sorry for and things I feel ashamed of. Like deep, face-burning-im-a-terrible-person shame.
For him, it's pushing his brothers face into a water fountain when they were very small and cutting his lip by accident. For me, it's a long and involved story involving karaoke, a bar bathroom, the Irish, and later on...Astroturf and a white delivery van.
Would confessing historical sins, and making amends actually make a difference to the way I feel about myself? Because seriously, I've got bucket loads of guilt about a whole variety of stupid crap and I've carried that for so long that I just don't think it's going away.
But for some people confessing, anonymously even, must be liberating because the interwebs are full of sites like this one where people are "getting naked" and revealing their secret shame.
If I had to track down someone to apologise to from my childhood it would probably have to be a girl named Carissa. When we were about six a popular game was "Swapsies" where you traded something you had for something you wanted. Carissa had these amazing red shoes. I wanted them SO bad. Anyway somehow I managed to convince her that it would be a fair trade if she swapped me her shoes for 12 collectable wrestling cards. I think I may have even told her that "boys will like you better" if she had these cards. Which were lame.
Anyway it worked and she traded her SHOES for these stupid cards. I knew at the time that it was an unfair trade. I even felt pangs of guilt as I saw her walking home from school with no shoes. But I was so obsessed with these red shoes I just didn't care.
Luckily for me and Carissa when I got home I was royally told off and made to return the shoes the next day. But I probably wouldn't have if I wasn't threatened by my parents.
And a secret to confess? Meh, I don't think I have any. I'm a pretty open person. Once when I was a child I hid in the garden and peed into a bucket because I was too lazy to go ALL THE WAY inside and go to the bathroom. That's probably about it.
The accessibility that we have to others, even people we never talk to in real life, people we haven't seen since we were eating crayons together as young children, means it's easy for us to track down those we feel we have wronged and try to make amends.
This got me to thinking about a couple of things. Firstly, do social networking sites provide us with a certain amount of bravado, so we can say the things we never had the balls to in person? (I'm voting yes)
Secondly, following on from a conversation I had with my husband last week, I've been thinking a lot about things that happened a long time ago I feel sorry for and things I feel ashamed of. Like deep, face-burning-im-a-terrible-person shame.
For him, it's pushing his brothers face into a water fountain when they were very small and cutting his lip by accident. For me, it's a long and involved story involving karaoke, a bar bathroom, the Irish, and later on...Astroturf and a white delivery van.
Would confessing historical sins, and making amends actually make a difference to the way I feel about myself? Because seriously, I've got bucket loads of guilt about a whole variety of stupid crap and I've carried that for so long that I just don't think it's going away.
But for some people confessing, anonymously even, must be liberating because the interwebs are full of sites like this one where people are "getting naked" and revealing their secret shame.
If I had to track down someone to apologise to from my childhood it would probably have to be a girl named Carissa. When we were about six a popular game was "Swapsies" where you traded something you had for something you wanted. Carissa had these amazing red shoes. I wanted them SO bad. Anyway somehow I managed to convince her that it would be a fair trade if she swapped me her shoes for 12 collectable wrestling cards. I think I may have even told her that "boys will like you better" if she had these cards. Which were lame.
Anyway it worked and she traded her SHOES for these stupid cards. I knew at the time that it was an unfair trade. I even felt pangs of guilt as I saw her walking home from school with no shoes. But I was so obsessed with these red shoes I just didn't care.
Luckily for me and Carissa when I got home I was royally told off and made to return the shoes the next day. But I probably wouldn't have if I wasn't threatened by my parents.
And a secret to confess? Meh, I don't think I have any. I'm a pretty open person. Once when I was a child I hid in the garden and peed into a bucket because I was too lazy to go ALL THE WAY inside and go to the bathroom. That's probably about it.
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